The dream/nightmare is over

NOVEMBER 21, 2007: When you're on a Chinese bicycle journey riding on dump-truck infested roads and one of you keeps getting dizzy every time you try to ride, you know what that means, right? You don't? It means it's time to buy a Chinese peasant truck! Photos

The bicycles have been phased after 1557km. In their place stands a noisy, 0.1-litre 3-wheeler that we bought brand new for A$770. It's freezing cold on the front, rough as a Guangdong hair lackey (thanks for the heads up Kenty) in the back where Boxxy, like all peasant women, sits. Its 4.8KW motor powers it up to a maximum speed of 60km/h, but only if you can stand the fearful rattling that kicks in above 45. It's really just as well though, because despite being brand new this thing has practically no brakes. Its front wheel brake is unashamedly token - at the shop i complained that it didn't work and the salesman simply told me, "they're all like that". The rear brakes have an unbelievably slim margin between not slowing the car at all and locking up completely. In short, it's a real stunner.

So stunning, in fact, that we can now ride around wherever we please and not be stared at: being the same maroon colour as all the rest of the poor peasantry's transportation (the rich peasantry have blue trucks), the people's eyes just sort of glide over us. It's fantastic.

The worst thing about buying the "trerk", as we refer to it, was being stuck in Jingbian ("Refined Side") for 4 days. Right in the middle of north Shaanxi, Jingbian's a messy, overgrown town where the people are generally unfriendly. As often is the case in unfriendly places, everyone seems either to be mean (40%), afraid (45%) or exceptionally warm-hearted (15%). A large number, maybe a majority, don't speak or understand Standard Mandarin. Standard Mandarin, in case you didn't know, is the dialect of Beijing, which has been implemented as a common language for the whole country. The dialect of Songyuan and the rest of the northeast (Pirate-speak) is very similar to Standard - the main difference would appear to be extra piratifications - and my friends in Songyuan warned me that i would not be able to understand anything the people in Gansu (where we started the trip) said. Funnily enough, throughout Gansu and Ningxia, two of the furthest-flung regions of China, most if not all people could speak and understand Standard. It's only been since we got into Shaanxi - the closest we've come to Beijing - that the unintelligible dialects have kicked in. Here people often exclaim, "You speak the common language!" - as though they expected me to speak some regional dialect spoken across an area the size of metropolitan Perth.

So, not a minute too soon, we hit the road from Jingbian. Our welcome to the world of Chinese motoring consisted of nearly dying in a head-on collision 5 minutes after starting when a truck heading the opposite way decided to swerve onto the wrong side of the road, apparently so as to not slow down as he turned a corner.

Our "soft-and-gay" abandonment of bicycles was promptly rewarded, however, as we headed up, up and up, into spectacular canyon country. At regular intervals along this road, as it skirts the massive, sheer cliffs, are missing and sheared-off concrete barriers, the sight of which prompted me to drive at a cowardly low speed.


Back down on the flats, we flew along (40km/h) for about half an hour before we hit more canyons. New roads go straight over them on giant stilts.


But old roads go down one side and up the other. After creeping down and struggling up through several gorges, we reached a crossroads that wasn't supposed to be. I asked a peasant where the roads went and his reply was utterly indecipherable. In fact, given the abovementioned dialect situation, his reply may well have been, "I don't understand your foreign language". I pulled out the map...and was dismayed to discover that he couldn't read either. We turned around and headed back through the canyons. This represented the first real test of the bike, as apparently the slopes had been steeper on the down-side, which was now the up-side. (Confused? Me too. Yes, we were indeed lost.) Two-thirds of the way up what was surely a 30-degree incline, the bike simply stopped. I jettisoned Boxxy, put it in neutral, rolled back down the hill and took a run-up. On this occasion we were lucky. But this particular part of the country was not finished with us yet. When i finally found a person with whom to communicate, he informed me the road marked on two different maps didn't exist and we instead must take a much longer route involving 5 more massive hills. Each one had to be scaled entirely in first gear, and on two more occasions the bike couldn't make it and needed Boxxy to get out and push. Needless to say i've quickly become a master of hill-starts.

Eventually, however, we reached a civilised road that, in a genuinely inspired show of ingenuity, ran along the bottom of an especially large canyon, all the way to the next town, Hengshan ("Unrestrained Mountain" - probably not the real meaning as this Heng character has 2 pronunciations and 7 meanings but this is my selection) which lies at the bottom. With the temperature hovering around 2 degrees, the town's coal stoves had filled the canyon with smoke. Hengshan proved to be the most poverty-stricken place we've been in China - riding in with the darkness, mist and smoke enfolding, the place looked closer to Kinshasa than Xi'an. We retuned at the most inappropriate time (in the morning) to take pictures; here is Hengshan, basking in sunshine and crisp air.


Continuing in the spirit of inappropriateness, Yulin, the next city, whose name means "Elm Forest", rises from a treeless sandy desert. I wouldn't be surprised if there once was an elm forest there, however. Northern China, to paraphrase the blog of some sterling fools who walked the length of the Great Wall, is an ecological disaster, and has been for centuries. There's no visible wildlife at all and no trees that haven't been planted by humans for human purposes.


Quite a number of Yulin's population will be talking for a while of a strange intervention by two very strange foreigners. As i was getting the 3-wheeler's oil changed, about 10 or so young men sprinted past, shouting about something. I thought they were running away from something until one was promptly tackled into some bushes and kicked in the head. "Thief?" i asked the mechanic, who nodded. But he wasn't. As we drove away about 20 minutes later, we noticed a crowd standing around watching as the 'thief', on his back, convulsed. Apparently the People's Court was carrying out its sentence. "What would they do if we just went in there and started comforting him?" Boxxy asked. "Let's find out," i replied, "he's probably going to die." We stopped the truck and ran into the circle. I put him on his side and asked if anyone had called an ambulance, while Boxxy held his hand. There were murmurs, some people tried to stop us, and the crowd quickly doubled in size. People tried hard to explain to us why we shouldn't help him. I didn't understand beyond (i think) the claim that he was acting, but he was clearly drunk and even more clearly bleeding from the head. I replied by asking, "What evil has he done?" (in those words - i don't know the word for 'crime'), to which a few people tried to reply. After lengthy explanations, all i could ascertain was that he had trashed a table in a nearby restaurant. After about a minute he started grabbing Boxxy, repeating over and over, "You saved me! You saved me!" which the crowd found very amusing. About 10 minutes later, he got up and walked off at a fine clip. All this despite the fact members of the crowd had claimed no ambulance was needed because the police were coming to arrest him.

The way from Yulin to Shenmu, ("God Tree", our present location), was first spectacular...



(Unfortunately for both the reader and my pretensions to photography, the above photo does this gorge no justice at all.)

...then it was bumpy, sandy and very dark. However, driving up sandy dune roads at night proved much less dangerous than the highway, which was so smoky that i couldn't use the high beams, and could barely see the road at all. Everyone else on the road could, though - Chinese drivers seldom turn their high beams off.

This morning we were confronted with this spectacular parade going right past our hotel. So we overtook them and took lots of pictures of their colourful get-up as they eased past.


The final car in the parade turned out to be a hearse.